The Druid Queen

by Douglas Niles

  Aware of his past defeat, Grond wasn’t certain that the result had been such a bad thing.

  12

  The Face of the Enemy

  Tristan camped a short distance from the scene of his fight with the trolls. Finding a low, tree-covered knoll where he could see reasonably well to all sides, he picketed Shallot within a screen of evergreens and ordered the hounds to remain silent and vigilant.

  Not daring to risk a fire—even Newt agreed that they didn’t want to bring the trolls back just yet—the High King and the faerie dragon ate a cold supper. The loquacious serpent shared his companion’s somber mood, talking little while they ate.

  Then Tristan found himself a comfortable tree. Laboriously climbing a dozen feet from the ground, using his one hand and his feet to pull himself up the rough bark, he found a wide notch between a pair of sweeping limbs. He leaned back against the trunk, secured by a wide limb encircling his left side. Newt buzzed up to him and then found a stout limb a little higher up the trunk. Here he curled up, catlike, and promptly fell asleep.

  Laying the blade he had dubbed Trollcleaver across his lap, the High King watched and waited throughout the remaining hours of evening and fading twilight. The hounds had found places to sleep under the tree, but they, too, remained alert and restless. Still there was no sign of any troll returning to the scene of the skirmish, nor did the corpses show any inclination to regenerate.

  Finally, after dark, Tristan slept, though he jolted awake at the sound of any scampering creature of the woodland. He longed to hear the cry of the wolves, but his wishes were met with silence, except for the rustling of the small animals. His hounds, under the example of the well-disciplined Ranthal, didn’t even growl at the rabbits and squirrels. They, like their master, waited for bigger game.

  Yet during the course of the night and the dawn, that bigger game never materialized. Stiffly climbing down from his perch before the sun had fully cleared the horizon, Tristan began to wonder if he had sent the band into flight. The latter possibility seemed pretty unlikely, given the fact that he was only one man, but why hadn’t they returned to the scene of their watch?

  It was time, Tristan decided, to find out what the trolls had been guarding. Climbing easily again into the saddle, with Newt curled up in his position on the pommel, the king urged Shallot into an easy trot. With Ranthal leading, the four remaining hounds loped in a protective screen before the horse and riders.

  Almost immediately Tristan noticed that the forest opened up into wide grainfields. He skirted a low hill and at last saw water gleaming before him. By the time he had passed the hill, he could make out the towers of the manor house and temple of a good-sized town.

  Codscove! Spurring the powerful war-horse into a canter, Tristan approached the community, sensing immediately that this was a scene of trouble. The great tracks through the grain indicated the advance of a large force, and as he drew closer to the town, he saw the blackened ruins of burned buildings.

  Yet, for all the signs of life meeting his eyes, it might have been a ghost town. A few piles of charred timbers still smoldered, casting thin wisps of smoke into the morning air, but the damage was at least a day or two old, Tristan knew. As he neared the first buildings, he saw human corpses, bloated and surrounded by flies, and from them he knew for certain that the battle had been two days before.

  It was a sight he had witnessed all too often before, though it had been many years since he had seen it in his own realm. A feeling of deep, fundamental violation took hold of him, slowly welling upward into a crescendo of growing rage. Again he tried to picture the firbolg lord who had brought all this to be. His hand itched to drive a blade into that hateful body, the grotesque image of evil. Why? Why do they attack? What do they seek?

  Cautiously he reined in, causing Shallot to prance nervously, still a hundred paces from the nearest fringes of the town.

  “What’re we stopping for?” demanded Newt, raising his head and peering through the horse’s white mane. “I’ll bet they have food in this town!”

  “Remember the way those trolls jumped us? I don’t want the same thing to happen when we get between those buildings.” Tristan could see that the narrow streets of the town created only a few routes he could use, and all of them could easily conceal a deadly ambush.

  “Well, if that’s all, I’ll go have a look!” huffed the dragon, bouncing into the air and immediately disappearing. Concealed by invisibility, he flew quickly forward, flying over the main street and looking into the buildings and walled yards to either side.

  Five minutes later he had returned to the king. “There’s nobody there—no humans, no giants, no trolls. Nothing!” he reported. “Now can we go see if we can find some decent food?”

  “I’m afraid not, old friend,” Tristan replied. He had learned what he wanted to learn. There was no point now in examining the tragic scenarios that would doubtless be evidenced in the houses of the town. “If the raiders aren’t here, they must have gone somewhere else, and I intend to find their trail!”

  He guided Shallot in a wide arc around the town, riding along the lanes that ran between the once lush fields. Now most of the crops had been trampled in the chaos of battle. At last, as he neared the shore, he found the muddy track left by a marching army. He saw the harbor, now placid and blue, but the masts of many small boats jutted from the surface, each marking the grave of a fisherffolk boat.

  On the ground below, huge, booted feet—firbolgs, Tristan recognized with a tingle of alarm that was nonetheless acute for the fact that the memory was twenty years old—had clumped along in the midst of the horde, while the bare, clawed feet of trolls had carved their own distinctive marks in the earth along the army’s fringes.

  “Maybe they marched into the town while we were riding around and getting hungry,” Newt suggested hopefully.

  “Look at the toes,” Tristan suggested. “They’re pointing away from Codscove.”

  “I guess you’re right,” Newt concluded glumly. “At least, some of them are going that way.”

  Ranthal bounded along the trail of the army, but now he stopped, a hundred feet ahead of Tristan, to look back at the king with his ears upraised. The other three moorhounds raced after their leader, and Shallot trotted along in the wake of the dogs.

  Tristan was about to call the rangy hounds back—he didn’t want them too far in the lead—but the steady Ranthal held his pace to a slow walk until the great war-horse drew near. Then the dogs spread into their protective screen, sniffing alertly and poking through the brush and hedges that flanked the path.

  The king’s shield was a comfortable weight on his left arm. He tugged at Trollcleaver, reassuring himself that the sword was loose in its scabbard. For several minutes, they rode in silence, even Newt peering alertly to the right and left while Tristan kept his eyes to the front.

  Abruptly Ranthal sprang away from a thick hedge, barking furiously. The other hounds joined him, hackles bristling, long fangs bared. Growling and snarling, they backed away from the lush greenery. Nothing moved there, but Tristan drew his sword and studied the hedge, knowing beyond any doubt that he approached a watch post of the predatory raiders.

  Tangled branches grew from the ground to a height of eight or nine feet, creating an impenetrable screen. Did another dozen trolls lurk there? He didn’t know, but neither did he hesitate in his cautious approach.

  “Look out!” squeaked Newt suddenly, bouncing into the air and vanishing as he chattered the alarm. A flash of movement drew the king’s attention to the left, just in time to see a huge troll leaping from the concealment of a muddy ditch.

  Desperately he raised his shield, bashing the creature’s face but failing to block the long, muscular arms. Claws raked his back through his chain mail as the beast seized him and pulled, trying to drag the king from his horse.

  Shallot reared instinctively, and only the deep, well-braced saddle saved Tristan from disaster. Grunting against the pain of the troll’s grip,
he smashed the hilt of Trollcleaver into the monster’s face, but the beast clung tenaciously. The war-horse bucked and kicked, unable to break the troll’s hold. The king felt the heat of the monster’s breath, smelled the fetid rot of its guts as cruelly slashing teeth attempted to tear off his shield arm.

  Twisting as much as he could, Tristan reversed the blade and plunged the steel tip into the troll’s gaping mouth. Trollcleaver emerged from the back of the monster’s neck in a shower of green blood and gore. Retching hideously, the monster finally let go of his victim, slumping back to the ground and writhing in its death throes.

  Before him, the dogs, in stiff-legged agitation, still backed away from the concealing shrubs, but the king’s attention was suddenly drawn to the rear. He saw them emerge from trees a quarter of a mile off the trail: scores of lanky trolls, racing through the fields in a shockingly fast sprint toward the High King of the Ffolk. Whirling back, he confirmed what he’d suspected a moment before as more of the creatures leaped from the rocks along the shore, closing the last part of the deadly ring.

  Except for the gauntlet of hedgerows before him. Even as he nudged the powerful stallion forward, huge forms pushed through, splintering the shrubs like twigs and sending the courageous moorhounds bounding back toward the king.

  Firbolgs! Each of them as tall as the king on his huge war-horse, the giant-kin brought back to Tristan a flood of memories from two decades before. He saw the crude assortment of weapons: clubs, mostly, with a few bearing big hammers, axes, or chipped and rusty-bladed swords. A few hefted rocks, and he eyed these most warily, knowing that a blow from one of them could knock him from his saddle or even kill him.

  With the appearance of the giants, the monstrous ring closed around Tristan. Behind him, the racing trolls had slowed to a walk once they reached the road. Those to the right and left seemed content to wait, blocking any escape attempt he might make. The firbolgs spread into a broad line, ambling toward the king with caution, more worried about keeping the ring closed than they were about rushing in to attack.

  Finally they all stopped, except for one truly colossal troll. That one carried a huge sword, the blade itself as long as Tristan was tall, carved with jagged, wicked-looking teeth down each edge. The massive humanoid swaggered forward with an unmistakable air of command. This one came from the right, where he could see all the components of the monstrous horde and the quarry caught so nicely in the middle of the ring.

  Ranthal and the other moorhounds formed a protective circle around their king, facing outward with jaws set firmly. Deep growls rumbled from each canine chest. Newt, of course, was nowhere to be seen.

  Holding his sword across his lap, Tristan urged Shallot into a slow walk, leaving the muddy track to push through a field of corn, straight toward the hulking troll.

  * * * * *

  Thurgol aimed the Princess of Moonshae toward a sheltered cove he observed on Oman Isle’s shore, but a surprisingly strong current carried him several miles to the east of this destination. Still, the Icepeak remained the crowning feature of their horizon, and the chieftain felt no particular apprehension as he regarded the rock-lined shore. Even if the longship was shattered against those boulders, his primary concern was accomplished if the firbolgs and the Silverhaft Axe could make it onto shore intact, and in the same place.

  Finally the firbolgs were fortunate enough to find a stretch of graveled beach, and the longship’s keel came to rest against the bottom with scarcely more than a timber-straining shudder that inflicted no damage to the sturdy hull.

  “Over the sides!” barked the giant chieftain, and his crew responded with alacrity. These were all firbolgs of his village. The giant-kin who had joined their march in progress had elected to remain with Baatlrap. The fact pleased Thurgol, for it gave him a sense that their quest would end as it had begun. These, his bold and loyal comrades, would see him through.

  “You wait here,” he told Garisa before he himself dropped over the transom into the gentle breakers.

  The sea came barely to the giant-kins’ knees for the most part, though at the stern, Thurgol stood in surf that washed as high as his chest. “Push!” he bellowed. “Push it up on the shore!”

  Here the steady strength of the firbolgs came to the fore as they raised the longship from the water and hauled it out of reach of the waves. It canted slightly to the side on the flat shore, but Thurgol felt certain that it would remain here—perhaps forever, he admitted, not capable of imagining a future path that would necessarily bring him back to this place, to this ship.

  Garisa clambered over the low side of the hull, clutching the Silverhaft Axe in her knobby fist. The giant-kin had brought nothing in the way of cargo beyond the possessions of each individual, so they were immediately ready to start the march.

  “There’s the mountain,” Thurgol said, pointing. “Let’s go.”

  “Remember,” the shaman cautioned him, “the Peaksmasher is imprisoned on the north slope of the peak, where the sun can never reach him. We have to approach it from the other side. We should go around the mountain first.”

  Thurgol considered the suggestion but determined that it didn’t make much sense. After all, he could see their objective before them, looming so close in the clear morning air that it looked as though he should have been able to reach out and touch it. “If we have to go to the other side,” he responded logically, “then the closest way to get there is to march over the top.”

  With that course firmly set before them, Thurgol of Blackleaf and some sixty of his villagemates set out to free the godfather of giantkind. Above them, the peak pierced the sky, its fringes of snowy shoulders beckoning the questing giant-kin with a cool beauty that was altogether unlike the difficult challenge presented by its steep slopes and icy, unceasing winds.

  * * * * *

  Shallot spun easily through a circle, allowing Tristan to get a full view of the encircling monsters. He guessed that there must be at least two hundred of the creatures, and the ring that had formed left him no likely gaps through which to escape. Slowly, steadily, they continued in their soundless advance.

  He wasted no time cursing fate or his own carelessness for this predicament. Instead, his mind clicked through options—he had precious few—and in an instant, he made up his mind. If he waited for them to rush him, the fight could have but one possible outcome. The only option available was an attempt to surprise the beasts with something they might not expect—something such as the target of the trap turning the tables on his ambushers.

  In the instant of decision, he set his heels into Shallot’s flanks, and the war-horse sprang forward like an eager filly, baying hounds coursing at his heels. Tristan rode straight toward the largest troll, the one bearing the massive, serrated blade.

  The huge troll gaped at him for a moment, stunned by the apparition of this doomed human having the effrontery to charge! But that moment passed quickly, and the creature raised its great sword while several of its fellows raced to its side. In seconds, Tristan bore down full tilt into a knot of six or eight trolls.

  He felt claws rake his leg at the same time as his sword split one green, knobby skull. The frantic baying of the hounds shrilled as they snarled into the monsters, one of the dogs wailing piteously as a huge troll picked up the hound and twisted it into a broken corpse. From the corner of his eye, Tristan saw another of the great hounds meet a similar fate. He slashed blindly, feeling his blade chop into the tangled bodies of his enemies. One of the trolls screamed, staggering backward with its clawed hands pressed to its face.

  Shallot pitched and bucked, the stallion’s powerful hooves crushing trollish limbs before and behind. The king caught a fleeting image of the huge troll, its jagged blade upraised for a killing blow, but then the horse whirled away and he faced a smaller humanoid. That one lunged for Shallot’s neck, but Tristan chopped its hands off with a clean blow. As the creature hissed in horror and hatred, the keen edge of Trollcleaver did the same thing to its head.

/>   “Here! This way!” shouted a familiar voice. Abruptly, from the ground before Tristan, short blades of flame spumed upward, crackling among the feet of the crouching trolls.

  “Newt!” shouted the king, recognizing the illusionary magic of the faerie dragon. The trolls squawked in dismay, springing out of the region of flame, opening a path for Tristan’s flight.

  But then the huge troll with the sword stepped right into the middle of the illusion, barking something in its bestial tongue. The flames around the creature flickered and grew pale, as Newt’s illusion lost its force. The disbelief of the leader proved enough to dispel the magic for the lesser trolls.

  More claws bit cruelly into the king’s hip while the stallion whinnied in pain. Tristan chopped without looking, feeling the blade bite into bony flesh, while at the same time, he bashed the shield on his left arm against a pair of grotesque, black-eyed humanoids bounding toward him from that side. He saw the hulking leader before him again, waiting with a nasty smirk on its teeth-studded jaws. Trolls sprinted toward them from the left and right, and Tristan knew that his first escape attempt had been blocked.

  “Back!” he shouted, again guiding Shallot with his knees while, with sword and shield, he battered at the trolls who had closed in behind him. Two of these fell, slain by Trollcleaver, while the others were forced back by the lunging stallion and the heavy shield.

  In another second, the war-horse broke free from the melee, galloping once more into the center of the ring of monsters, trailed by Ranthal and one other moorhound. The great circle had grown considerably smaller during the brief skirmish. Tristan reined in after a sprint of thirty paces, since any farther would have taken him close to the trolls approaching from the direction of the shore. To his right, the firbolgs still advanced in a steady wave, while another large band of trolls blocked any escape to his left.